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The Success of Edward Thorp as a Blackjack Pro

Blackjack is one of the most played gambling games in casinos or gambling facilities. There are a lot of people who are interested in playing this card game because of the fact that it requires a combination of the elements of skill and chance. Although poker is a more popular gambling game than blackjack, still there are several well-known professional blackjack players in the world. In this regard, we would like to focus our discussion on one of the world's best professional blackjack players, Dr. Edward O. Thorp.

Born in Chicago, Illinois on August 14, 1932, Edward O. Thorp is not only a professional blackjack player, but he is also an author of a blackjack book and professor of mathematics. He is also known as one of the inventors of wearable computers.

Prior to becoming a professional blackjack player, Edward O. Thorp held various positions in several companies after he obtained his Ph.D. degree in 1958 from the University of California, Los Angeles. Between 1959 and 1961, he was employed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Starting in 1965, he began teaching mathematics at the UC Irvine and went on to teaching such subject until 1982. In 1977, he also started teaching finance.

In 1962, Edward O. Thorp released his book titled "Beat the Dealer: A Winning Strategy for the Game of Twenty One." It was the first blackjack book ever written about the feasibility of card counting in beating the game of blackjack. The credibility of his book lies on the fact that he uses mathematical theories to discuss explicitly and successfully the powers of card counting. The methods of winning that were discovered by this professional blackjack player were already popular even before he wrote the book. News about such methods was quickly disseminated by blackjack players who heard about it right away. Eventually, this professional blackjack player started to become popular among the enthusiasts of blackjack. And when people began to ask him about such methods incessantly, it was the time when he decided to write such book. "Beat the Dealer: A Winning Strategy for the Game of Twenty One" has been recognized as an authentic manual for card counting. More than seven hundred thousand copies of such book were sold and it even became one of the books listed in the Bestseller Books of New York Times.

Edward O. Thorp does not only use his vast knowledge of mathematics in analyzing the game of blackjack, but he also uses it in analyzing the stock market. His ability to use his wisdom about statistics and probability has allowed his personal investments to experience a remarkable increase for more than twenty eight and a half years. He has also written a book about the stock market, which is titled "Beat the Market: A Scientific Stock Market System."

Indeed, due to the vast understanding of Edward O. Thorp about mathematics, he has been a credible source of winning strategies, both in blackjack and in the stock market.